Ballou was the fictional roving reporter — “and winner of 16 diction awards” — on the long-gone Bob and Ray radio shows that for more than 30 years produced fabulously silly satire (recordings of which are available and highly recommended).

Ballou, whose voice was supplied by Bob Elliott, once reported live from London while standing in front of The Bank of England, where he witnessed “the Guarding of the Change.”

Another time, Ballou landed an exclusive with the only circus ringmaster — the voice of Ray Goulding — without a mustache. He revealed to Ballou the clowns made fun of him until he whipped them.

But slowly, at first, and now steadily, TV delivers such silliness in the form of the seriously unintentional.

Saturday, shortly after 7 a.m., the TV graphic showed it was 36 degrees outside. That’s when Ch. 7 “Eyewitness News” reporter Marcus Solis appeared live. He was standing outside Yankee Stadium, which was closed. No one else was in sight.

Solis and crew were dispatched to Yankee Stadium to report Mariano Rivera, at 10 a.m., would announce his retirement after this upcoming season.

That announcement would be made from the Yankees’ spring training facility in Florida, roughly 1,000 miles away from where Solis stood.

As Ch. 7’s Eyewitness News goes, viewers were eyewitnesses to a pre-fabricated absurdity. Good thing Rivera wasn’t scheduled for a 10 a.m. trip to the Florida electric chair, or Ch. 7 might have sent Solis to stand outside a Bronx Con Ed plant.

But there was more where that came from: That afternoon, the Notre Dame-Louisville game was shown on CBS. Louisville, slave to both modern fashion and adidas, now seems to wear a different uniform every other week.

Saturday, Louisville was dressed in red — red as in all red — red uniforms with red numbers and player’s names on the back in red.

While that eliminated the purpose of wearing numbers and names, it did turn venerable CBS play-by-play man Verne Lundquist into vulnerable Verne Lundquist. Forced into the role of Wally Ballou, he far too politely spoke the absurdity: The uniforms “were not designed for the comfort of the broadcaster.”

A few minutes later, Lundquist reported “Henderson, No. 15, has checked in for Louisville.” Perhaps Lundquist was being sarcastic, but if “No. 246.5, Shmenderson” had checked in, there would be no distinguishing him from No. 15, Henderson.

This was pure Bob and Ray: Wally Ballou in Louisville, Ky., reporting on the local team’s new uniforms — red, with red numbers and the names of the players in red.

And the kicker was Notre Dame could have — but didn’t — wear its black-on-black adidas uniforms — those that also make its players names and numbers indistinguishable.

Nike making Coach K color-blind

One of the Duke traditions under Mike Krzyzewski is obedience to Nike. Saturday against North Carolina, the Blue Devils wore their Nike-mandated mostly black uniforms.

* What was more flabbergasting at the close of Wichita State-Creighton yesterday: Creighton coach Greg McDermott not calling for his team to foul, up three with :08 left, or CBS’ Tim Brando and Bill Raftery not even bringing it up?

* Good call by ABC/ESPN, yesterday before Bulls-Lakers, applying in-game audio to Carlos Boozer and Dwight Howard, both of whom would make for a good listen.

* Now that the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to another realignment next season, based on geographical and travel concerns, it shouldn’t be long before a franchise shifts, you know, like when Denver moved to Jersey, Winnipeg to Phoenix, Atlanta to Calgary.

* Lost in the mega-riches Jersey Joe Flacco story is he was mentored in mechanics by fellow Delaware grad and former Giants QB Scott Brunner.

* Isn’t there even one radio talk show host to demand that callers stop this “Thanks for taking my call” nonsense?

* Those attention-starved fools who stand near tee-boxes and scream, “Get in the hole!” bring to mind Spike Lee and just-because court-stormers. All figure that having a ticket entitles them to TV-op participation.

* You know you’ll always be a baseball fan – you can’t help it, even at 50, 60, 70 – when you mindlessly throw a stick, a rock or a snowball over a fence then say to yourself, “Gone!”

Shocking! Greed killed Big East

Let the record show that the Big East, born and raised on TV money, has been dissolved due to its members’ pursuit of TV money.

Big East Senior Associate Commissioner Nick Carparelli last week tweeted a reminder, in the form of a boast, that “Big East football was the first conference to embrace Thursday night games. Now everyone wants in on that franchise.”

That’s one way of looking at it. Another is to credit the Big East for being the first college conference to stop pretending its football players were in any way recruited to be legitimate students rather than to pursue any and every path in order to procure every penny it could from ESPN.

* If the World Baseball Classic can ensure brawls like Saturday’s Canada-Mexico total-runs-scored number, the TV rights value will soar! Could fulfill the premise and promise of Ted Turner’s long-gone Goodwill Games — global good will predicated on the outbreak of a sports holy war between the U.S. and USSR.

* How NBC’s Johnny Miller and Dan Hicks can complain about how long it takes for Webb Simpson, among others, to putt, yet year after year and as recently as Saturday, ignore Tiger Woods’ marathon pre-putt perusal sessions, is nauseating.